After the Stroke

by May Sarton

  Bulbs have come but I shall wait I think till late October to put them in, so at least the chipmunks won’t get at them before the ground freezes.

  Friday, October 3

  I came back from my first professional sortie this morning. A Book and Author Lunch at Dartmouth College. It was foggy but by the time I was out in the country the fog was only making Chinese paintings with its swirls on distant hills, and I came home drunk all over again with the beauty of this New England. Everything I see now is seen freshly because I have been away so little for nearly a year. But the soft yellows, oranges and sudden scarlet of swamp maples—the secret ponds and lakes hidden away in the hills, and the old gentle hills themselves—it made me homesick for New Hampshire.

  It is a relief to have this first hurdle of public appearances behind me, although at first I felt like another attack by the gremlins that seem to be attending me lately, for I thought the dinner preceding the festivities was Thursday, and it turned out to have been Wednesday! Nardi Campion called on Wednesday evening as I was getting my supper—very relieved to find I was all right. Kind of her not to be cross, but I began to think I must be crazy—so it was a bad night, especially as Pierrot was nowhere to be found till after nine and I was stupidly anxious. He is so white he is really too obvious as prey—and the night before at four in the morning I had heard the awful shriek of a rabbit, no doubt being lifted away in the talons of the barred owl. Noel Perrin, at the dinner he gave last night, reassured me. He thinks an owl would not win against a large fierce cat.

  What a joy it was to see Noel again! He has white hair now and writes often for the Times and elsewhere and won the National Book Award in the last few years. I find him an utterly charming man, shy and eloquent, beautiful in a subtle way. Humor flickers in his eyes. I have always, since we met at Breadloaf years and years ago, known that we were kindred. “We meet about every twelve years,” he said. It is so fine to be at once so at ease as though we were old friends. He is twice-divorced and when I suggested as he walked me back to the hotel that there was much to be said for solitude, he said that his ideal marriage would be alternating weeks of solitude and family life—but it would be hard to make the transition back and forth.

  He gave the dinner for me, Nardi Campion and her husband, and a silent young woman professor at Dartmouth who is a fan. I liked her straight look but she said nothing. Anyway it was an extravagant gesture for Noel. You have to be a millionaire to take five friends to a restaurant these days—and it was a truly festive meal at a French place called Une Fraise just down the street from the Hanover Inn. The desserts were especially marvelous, mine crème anglaise with some fragrant syrup of fruit poured over it, no doubt enhanced by a liqueur.

  It was far better for me to be invited to dinner after the exhausting day than it would have been the night before—although I missed seeing Dick Eberhart and Betty and for that I’m sorry.

  The day began at five when I stumbled out of bed in the dark in order to leave here and drive for two and a half hours to Hanover by half past nine. I made it in time to take part in a radio interview with Jane Brody—the health expert at the New York Times. Louise Erdrich got there as we were running out of time. I found myself on top of things and happy to be “at it” again. Brody is a truly committed person and that is always endearing. But Erdrich was the most delightful surprise, so quiet and witty, so generous—she talked about what the Hopkins Center had meant to her when she was a student at Dartmouth. She has five children and has already won every prize with Love Medicine—she is half Chippewa—and that was a stunning book but not quite a novel, rather a series of short stories strung together. What does that matter? Only I suppose that the organization of a novel is much more complex and harder to design. I liked L. E. tremendously and felt a thrill to be on the stage, for once, with two women I admire.

  But I’m glad the Concord reading tomorrow is reading poems where I am able to create my own atmosphere and Zeitgeist. They have had to move from the chapel at Concord Academy to a large auditorium, “requests from all over the East Coast,” the librarian told me.

  Saturday, October 4

  A gray day here with just a streak of bright silver at the horizon where the sun has broken through. The air is gentle. The world feels very still and autumnal here. The animals are asleep somewhere in the house. I feel happy to have this day for myself.

  Sunday, October 5

  But it didn’t turn into a May day after all—a phone call at eight broke the morning meditation when I plan the day and as I water the plants, make my bed, etc., approach what I hope to do slowly. A phone call at that time shatters the creative person in me like a glass. Then the mail brought a request for a recommendation to the National Endowment. I believe Karen Elias is going to do something of great philosophical importance as she continues to probe the female psyche. I am happy to recommend her but it had to be done at once. I read it with the mail at noon when I was feeling very tired—and laid it aside till after a short nap. I felt once more that I can’t handle my life. It is too much for me to be the crossroads—or whatever I am—for so many many people, never to be quite free to have my own life, to be always suspended on someone else’s need. I managed to write something for the Endowment. But I felt upset, at cross-purposes.

  Meanwhile I am reading Peter Hyun’s fascinating autobiography, Man Sei.! He has managed to compress an enormous amount of information into the tale of his childhood in Korea under the Japanese—and at the same time give a vivid picture of his droll, brave, sensuous nature—so we are entranced by being allowed in to this remarkable family, and into a part of history we don’t know. But this necessity to read fast and write to Peter has also made me feel like a donkey being beaten, “Faster, faster!”

  Peter was at the Civic Repertory when I was a student and director of students there in the thirties—and I saw him last summer briefly with his delightful wife and his daughter. He is such a beautiful old man.

  Now in a few minutes I must set out for Concord to give my first poetry reading. Thank goodness the sun is out and I’ll have a wonderful drive through the transparent golds and crimsons.

  Monday, October 6

  What a joy to be with Phyllis and Timmy Warren—Tim is Judy’s nephew and they are really “family” for me now—in their old Victorian house in Concord, Massachusetts, only two things missing, Keith Warren, “Gramp,” who is now in a nursing home, and the yellow cat who used to sit between Keith and me on the sofa. Keith, well over ninety, still writes wonderful short essays on whatever is on his mind although he is legally blind now. I slept in his room and felt warmed by all the family photographs on the wall, grandchildren now joining his beloved wife Barbara, Judy’s sister, and their three children. Tim, white-haired and distinguished, has taken on one advisory job after another, an exemplary citizen of Concord, so I teased them about being “the Royals” of the town.

  I had a short nap after lunch, got dressed, and off we went to the Concord Academy, a beautiful modern auditorium which looked almost full at two forty-five. I was touched and delighted to see Keats Whiting in the second row. She was ninety the other day and never goes out, but was driven over with others from Carleton Village by Anne Tremearne.

  All of this felt cheerful and welcoming—Susan Sherman in the front row with a bunch of vivid red and white anemones for me—but I have to admit that I am very shaky still. It was not nerves but physical weakness I had to combat when I started off.

  I think it was a good reading—though I entirely forgot to read the first poem, “Franz, A Goose”—and only remembered it in the middle of the night. I made a break halfway through and sat down for a minute, and that was a real help. It is so odd to feel and be so frail!

  After the reading we all went over to the library for champagne and delicious pastries and hors-d’oeuvres. I never got a chance to eat because people were lined up in what seemed hundreds to get me to sign books. So many connected to me in some way—including a woman who had done
the costumes for a production of Trelawny of the ‘Wells’ I directed years and years ago at the school—in 1940.

  Jamey Hawkins and her friend sat beside me while I signed, the dear things, all the way from Boston and Jamey not well. It was a kind of Sarton “Old Home Day” and I loved it, though after nearly an hour I felt rather bushed.

  The good news is that I know now that I can manage a performance—so I’ll leave for Indianapolis with more confidence.

  I brought home with me a round basket of flowers and herbs like an eighteenth century bouquet, and the card read:

  Roses for Love

  Rosemary for Remembrance

  Mint for Eternal Refreshment

  Oregano for Substance

  Verbena for Delicacy of Feeling

  Santolina to ward off Evil

  Zinnias for Thoughts of Absent Friends

  Tuesday, October 7

  Yesterday there was a momentous event for me and that was to read Darlene Davis’s M. A. thesis for Pennsylvania State at Harrisburg, “Johannes Vermeer and May Sarton: a Shared Aesthetic.” I read it with amazement to find someone who has understood so well what I am after and has managed to relate it to the incomparable Vermeer in convincing ways. She used Vermeer’s painting “A Woman Holding a Balance” as her chief anchor in the analysis and A Reckoning, my novel, as counterpart.

  She defines the “shared aesthetic” as 1) light, so much the essence of Vermeer’s magic and so often mentioned in my work; 2) the woman alone; 3) something that might be called the sacramentalization of ordinary life, the “ordinary” tasks of home-making. This work has given me great joy. Occasionally repetitious, she nevertheless uses a great deal of material, including Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, and the poems with grace and wisdom. Now I must write and thank her.

  Carmelite Monastery, Indianapolis, Thursday, October 9

  [What an extraordinary adventure this is and how lucky I am to have been invited to stay with the Carmelites! I am still in a state of blissful astonishment.

  But I was rather nervous when Rusty Moe left me here. We had stood outside the medieval fortress before the formidable oak door for a few moments. When it slowly opened and a delightful woman said, “I’m Jean Alice. Welcome, May,” I was unprepared for such easy grace. She looked like a college teacher in a blouse, sweater and skirt, and it never occurred to me that she was the prioress, as I soon learned. And when the door had closed behind Rusty Moe and the outside world, I felt I was in a happy dream.

  Jean Alice put my luggage on a luggage cart and wheeled it herself, so we walked alone through the stone corridors and tiny recessed windows looking out on the garden or the cloister. We passed many closed doors which I presumed were doors to the sisters’ rooms, and paused for a moment in the chapel, a simple chapel used every day, not the more formal large chapel I was to see later. My quarters proved to be the infirmary. There were flowers from the garden. I did not know it then but learned later that Jean Alice is the gardener and shares my passion for gardening and my madness in ordering seeds and plants when the catalogs come. But what I felt at once was someone acutely sensitive to the needs of others. She left me to unpack, mentioning that she would come and fetch me just before six to go down to supper.

  The infirmary lets nature in as it faces French doors to a wide balcony and has windows on both sides, so I was with trees in a haven of beauty and peace. I unpacked and when that was done lay down, listened to the silence, and fell asleep almost at once. I slept for two hours and then worked a while before supper on rearranging the poems for my reading on Sunday. I heard a cardinal somewhere nearby, and saw a lovely big dog roaming around below. The monastery is enclosed in high walls but the planting is quite informal so it is rather like a park, at least what I could see from my windows. The sense of enclosure, of being separated from the world, is palpable.

  Later I learned how privileged I was to be taken in to the inner sanctum, rarely opened to guests even during a retreat. Jean Alice had sent me a postcard before I came with a photograph of the monastery. On the back I read, “At its dedication in 1932 the cloister was closed forever to the public by Bishop Joseph Chartrand.” Jean Alice had underlined “forever” and written beside it, “Times have changed!.”

  There was a reason for my warm welcome. Jean Alice had written, “A friend of mine who has read and appreciated your works for many years gave me Journal of a Solitude about ten years ago. You have been part of our stream of reading and reflection ever since.” So I was being welcomed as a friend, with tender regard.]

  Carmelite Monastery, Friday, October 10

  [It is all so silent and at first the corridors and many closed doors so mysterious and bewildering that I would have been lost without Jean Alice to show me the way down to the first floor where the large dining room is. There I was introduced to ten of the sixteen Carmelites and we sat round a big square table with a votive candle at each place. After grace had been said the conversation began and continued at a lively pace during the whole of supper. I was inundated with questions about my work and realized that some of the sisters had read a lot of Sarton. They were of all ages, each a strong individual. I did not dare ask too many questions but I did learn that they take turns, each cooking for a week at a time. That night we feasted on an eggplant soufflé, carrots and peas, and a light creamy dessert washed down with a choice of rosé or white wine. The atmosphere created by these remarkable women is both innocent and of great depth. How rarely am I asked such cogent questions! How rarely feel so at home, even to our sharing strong feelings about Reagan’s policy in South America! About Nicaragua one sister said passionately, “We are the oppressors.”

  I was in bed by eight. It had been a rich day of experience for me, and I was thankful to be in such a haven because I do still feel frail and a little anxious because of the performances before me.]

  This morning I worked hard at cutting As We Are Now for the University of Indiana where I am to read it as one of the Patten Foundation Lectures. [It was moving in this instance to follow in my father’s footsteps, for he was a Patten Foundation lecturer thirty-one years ago in 1954–55, when he gave six lectures on men of science in the Renaissance that were published as a book, Six Wings. He spent a month in Bloomington. By comparison, my own effort is minimal, a reading of As We Are Now, by request, and a reading of poems. I am nervous because reading As We Are Now must be a sustained dramatic performance and I quail before that immense effort.] Probably I won’t feel as ill when that ordeal is over on Tuesday.

  This morning I also planned the poetry reading for Hermitage here, got it all organized with the lavender slips marked and titled at the proper pages, so this day has been very good, peaceful and workful.

  Then I left the medieval world and was taken out to lunch by one of Anne Thorp’s nieces, Helen Knowles Glancy, who arrived full of charm and full of questions about The Magnificent Spinster, where her aunt appears as Jane Reid. I am so happy that she liked the book and apparently spread it around the family when it came out. She had brought a book of photos of Greening’s Island and of the whole family gathered there for three days after Anne’s death to divide things up and, I presume, to decide what was to be done with the houses. When I came back I was so filled with nostalgia for that vanished world I was close to tears.

  Judy and I spent about ten days on the island every summer for seventeen years. In a way it gave me a feeling of being sheltered, not responsible for life, what it does for me now to be here in this marvelous monastery—where I am the beneficiary of all the work the Carmelites do to keep the life here rooted in order and peace.

  The chapel is very simple with chairs arranged informally as though in a living room—centered by a round table. Nothing showy—a great sense of intimacy with the Lord.

  Here I am able to sit for hours just watching the light come and go. Today, a brilliant day, sun through the leaves which have not changed yet, so it is still very green.

  Carmelite Monastery, Su
nday, October 12

  [In a few moments I am going to Mass just across the hall from my room. Undoubtedly, it had been planned to place the infirmary adjoining the small chapel so the sick can participate. The liturgy on Sunday is ecumenical so a few men and women were finding their places and Jean Alice came over to me to say softly that I would be welcome to share in the Eucharist. I felt tears starting behind my eyes. It is the starving for true religious experience that brings on weeping. I cannot help it. I was rather nervous when I sat down in a corner alone, but was soon absorbed in this unusually open way of celebrating Mass. The priest sits in an ordinary chair and simply stands to deliver the homily. The hour was filled with joyful music: Leslie playing the bass viol in one corner, another member of the community a guitar and then Jean Alice’s soprano soaring up over everyone else’s voice. She is such a small woman that it is amazing to listen to her voice as pure and unselfconscious as a bird’s. My friend Rusty Moe from Hermitage had been asked to read the lesson and there he stood in a bright red sweater and white shirt and that made me feel at home. The reading from the New Testament was the healing of the ten lepers, only one of whom, the Samaritan, the outsider, went back to thank Jesus and affirm his faith. And the homily was built around this story.

  After the homily the priest sat down and, after a short silence, people in the congregation spoke as the spirit moved them and it felt very much then like a Quaker meeting. Several members had interesting comments to make but the most astounding was Jean Alice’s gentle voice saying, “My hands are God’s hands.” The sentence reverberated among us in a long silence.